[AusNOG] Very funny NBN skit

[Narelle]

On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 1:52 PM, Paul Wallace <paul.wallace at mtgi.com.au> wrote:
>
> As a separate note Liberty Group has 25 million subscribers in Europe mostly on HFC & they're
> continuing to build out HFC as fast as they can! That's HFC not fibre. Here in Australia we're
> paying billions of tax taxpayers funds to rip the two great HFC networks down.
>
> We actually pay cash here to destroy first class telecoms assets!
>

Alright - I'll bite. :-)

To go from existing DOCSIS platforms to higher capacity ones, ie make
the transition from TDM to OFDM, you need to change out the head end
electronics and RF plans for the entire networks. The existing CMTS
hardware in place may not be capable of supporting it - the line cards
certainly aren't - so a substantial upgrade is required to get to
DOCSIS 3.1 and above. All household modems need to be replaced also.
Significant tuning and effort is required across the network to
condition the plant.
That standard isn't finalised, either.
http://www.lightreading.com/docsis/docsis-31-to-be-revealed-at-cabletec-expo/240135059

To make the transistional move to higher than DOCSIS 1.1 - even before
going to DOCSIS 3.1 - you need to replace the customer modems, and
rejig your RF plan to ensure you can support the bandwidth customers
demand in competition with any TV you are servicing. High definition
TV is a bandwidth hog, and there has been little take up of trickle
down options and local storage for popular programs and/or P2P
servicing from set top boxes. Current service models may not fit.

The service model of the future is also much less download oriented
and requires higher upload bandwidths. More challenges for the RF
plan.

That means about now is a good time to really assess that investment.
If you own an HFC network and you haven't exactly maintained the
outside plant particularly well, then it might be a really good time
to stop doing it. If your OSS  and other business systems are
magnificently tuned, with a hard to shift model, then that might be a
good argument to stay. I suspect the former is quite true, and the
latter not so true in Australia's case. Both add up to a timely move
away.

HFC has been a largely failed investment in Australia partly because
of the competition aspects when it came into being: many people
remember the laughable sight of one crew turning up to install,
rapidly followed by the other within days, and so no-one got
sufficient footprint to really sustain the business well. Then they
competed against each other for content and the studios laughed all
the way to the bank as they watched the prices rise. A certain non
incumbent telco really suffered and wrote down the investment
massively. Once that went, profits were possible!

One of the main reasons for going to a federally funded national
broadband network is to get to an optimal competitive platform.
Infrastructure competition has not led to good outcomes nationally.
Our HFC experience is a textbook example.

HFC is a fibre to the node technology. That's what the Hybrid, Fibre
and Cable all stand for: FTTN. The current networks are not capable of
a fully loaded 90%+ penetration rate delivery to all of the approx 3m
homes the combined Telstra (2.5m) and Optus (2.2m) homes pass. This is
due to the condition of the cable and the RF plans used to apportion
available bandwidth. Upgrades to backhaul etc are easy in this
context, but reworking your HFC is not.

Much of that cable also is aerial, all the way to the homes, and a
very popular source of Cockatoo entertainment. No-one has been able to
get a multi-dwelling unit model working properly within that scheme.

That said, I rather enjoy the service my family gets from it, and all
the years I was employed by one of them, testing all the newer
broadband delivery options, I always happily went back to the HFC
service afterwards.

But no-one was offering me a brand new fibre...

GPON is vastly more reconfigurable than HFC at the physical level, and
vastly more upgradeable electronics-wise leading to much better long
term capacity and serviceability.

What all sides of politics should have done, imho, was to sort out
sensible industry competition, say, about 10yrs+ ago and promoted FTTN
transition then, when it would have been a sensible transition
technology. What did we have? A less than competitive marketplace, and
little mechanism to move across then.

>
> We actually pay cash here to destroy first class telecoms assets!
>

Indeed, asset holders should be paid cash to transition off to more
longer term, more optimal platforms as part of a sensible government
program. Imagine your house being confiscated to build a highway with
no recompense?


regards


Narelle